Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards require head-impact testing of various vehicle interior components, such as headliners, A-pillar trim cover components, steering wheel, etc. Such components are typically tested within a fully assembled motor vehicle. Usually, a firing structure is set up within the vehicle for firing a headform directly at an interior component to be tested. The headform includes a plurality of accelerometers therein for testing deceleration as the headform engages the particular component being tested. Accordingly, energy dissipation characteristics of the particular component may be tested by monitoring the accelerometers in the headform.
A typical prior art firing structure-type test device is a free motion headform test device, such as a FMVSS 201-U test machine manufactured by MGA Research Corporation of Burlington, Wis. or a FMH test system manufactured by MTS Systems Corporation of Eden Prairie, Minn. A common problem with such firing structures is that it is difficult to repeatably and accurately control firing velocity and direction of the headform for testing and it is expensive to acquire the vehicle bodies in quantities necessary for the development of head impact countermeasures. This lack of repeatability may adversely affect test results.
This type of component testing is highly expensive and inconvenient for design purposes because the headform firing structure is typically employed within a fully assembled vehicle. Accordingly, entire vehicles must be used for such testing, and it is difficult to acquire the vehicle bodies in quantities necessary to perfect energy dissipation characteristics of a particular component being tested. A head impact test typically deforms the body sheet metal changing the characteristics of the structure underlying the component under test.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a head-impact test device for crash-testing individual vehicle components which does not require testing within an assembled vehicle. It is desirable to provide such a test device in which individual components may be tested separately, and appropriate data may be gathered for component energy dissipation performance testing.